CONTRA NATURAM
In ecclesiastical Latin, "AGAINST NATURE."
The Catholic Encyclopedia Online indicates that there is no simple history to the condemnation of usury by the medieval, let alone the contemporary, Catholic Church. Its entry on usury does not mention anything like a theological objection to the "infertility" of money to create wealth. Its only reference to "nature" invokes pre-Christians: "Plato (Laws, v. 742) and Aristotle (Politics, I, x,xi) considered interest as contrary to the nature of things." This might be revisionist, unobtrusively dropping "infertility" from the development of doctrine; perhaps regarding it as more poetic than philosophically or theologically rigorous. On the other hand justice appears, in the history of the doctrine, to be the virtue at risk. "Lending money at interest gives us the opportunity to exploit the passions or necessities of other men by compelling them to submit to ruinous conditions; men are robbed and left destitute under the pretext of charity. Such is the usury against which the Fathers of the Church have always protested, and which is universally condemned at the present day."
From Virgil's mouth (Inferno, Canto XI, 97-111) Dante draws something like the more familiar medieval view, but with a Dantean bias:
The translations here are Allen Mandelbaum's (INFERNO, University of California Press, 1980). Dorothy Sayers, however, in her translation (The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine: Cantica I HELL (L'Inferno) Penguin Books, 1949) provides clearer notes:
Although Dante presents Virgil's discourse on usury in Canto XI, the Usurers themselves do not turn up till Canto XVII (54-57), where they occupy Circle VII, Ring iii.
"Filosofia," mi disse, "a chi la 'ntende,
nota, non pure in una sola parte,
come natura lo suo corso prende
dal divino 'ntelletto e da sua arte;
e se tu ben la tua Fisica note,
tu troverai, non dopo moke carte,
che 1'arte vostra quella, quanto pote,
segue, come '1 maestro fa '1 discente;
si che vostr' arte a Dio quasi è nepote.
Da queste due, se tu ti rechi a mente
lo Genesi dal principio, convene
prender sua vita e avanzar la gente;
e perchée; l'usuriere altra via tene,
per sée; natura e per la sua seguace
dispregia, poi ch'in altro pon la spene. ..."
"Philosophy, for one who understands,
points out, and not in just one place," he said,
"how nature follows--as she takes her course--
the Divine Intellect and Divine Art;
and if you read your Physics carefully,
not many pages from the start, you'll see
that when it can, your art would follow nature,
just as a pupil imitates his master;
so that your art is almost God's grandchild.
From these two, art and nature, it is fitting,
if you recall how Genesis begins,
for men to make their way, to gain their living;
and since the usurer prefers another
pathway, he scorns both nature in herself
and art, her follower; his hope is elsewhere. ..."
Canto XI. 95 sqq.: usury as a crime against God's bounty: Dante's thought in this passage (which is that of the Medieval Church) is of such urgent relevance today that it is worth while to disentangle it from his (to us) rather odd and unfamiliar phraseology. What he is saying is that there are only two sources of real wealth: Nature and Art - or, as we should put it, Natural Resources and the Labour of Man. The buying and selling of Money as though it were a commodity creates only a spurious wealth, and results in injury to the earth (Nature) and the exploitation of labour (Art). The attitude to men and things which this implies is a kind of blasphemy; since Art derives from Nature, as Nature derives from God, so that contempt of them is contempt of Him.
ma io m'accorsi
che dal collo a ciascun pendea una tasca
ch'avea certo colore e certo segno,
e quindi par che 'l loro ochio si pasca.
... but I did notice
that from the neck of each a purse was hung
that had a special color and an emblem,
and their eyes seemed to feast upon these pouches.
The Usurers. These, as we have seen, are the image of the Violent against Nature and the Art derived from Nature; they sit looking upon the ground, because they have sinned against that and against the labour that should have cultivated its resources. The old commentator Gelli observes brilliantly that the Sodomites and Usurers are classed together because the first make sterile the natural instincts which result in fertility, while the second make fertile that which by its nature is sterile - i.e. they "make money breed." More generally, the Usurers may be taken as types of all economic and mechanical civilizations which multiply material luxuries at the expense of vital necessities and have no roots in the earth or in humanity.